Hi all its been a year or more since the last time I used 3dsmax 9 to export a mesh with a weapon.

The problem Im having is when I use a link constraint connected to a bone I set for the gun to the bipped hand it links fine

in 3ds max and follows the hand well but when I export it to .x file using panda the gun sort of follow the hand but starts to swing away from the hand when the spine rotates.

Ive rebuilt the rig at least 10 times tryed every thing even built the mesh(unit) again just in case the animation was not the same as the guns.

same problem.

Ive tryed setting key frame for the whole animation. same out of synk play back when the gun and unit are saved by them selfs.

Is there somet thing I need to do with the link to get it to follow all motion of the bip.

if I use the same rig for the gun that I do with the unit it is in synk but that uses 22 bone as the gun should only need 2 bones.

I use the trajectorie Collapse Transform to generate Keys for the gun animation.

What are you using to preview the exported result? IIRC Panda does not have a viewer.

Do you really need to export the gun's animation? If you're using Link constraint, you simply want the gun to follow the hand.

You could export the animated character, and then export the gun centered at the world's origin in a separate file as a static mesh. In your game engine, attach (or Parent) the gun to the hand. This way it's the engine that's doing the "Link Constraint", not 3DS Max.

If you DO need the gun animated in the file...

Before you animate the gun at all, make sure you cleaned its transform. A dirty transform would have negative scales etc. 3DS Max compensates for irregular transforms and the engine you're using to load the animation probably isn't liking that.

To clean the transform, select the gun, go to the Utilities tab -> Reset XForm. Make sure the gun's pivot isn't lost somewhere.

Then you can proceed to use the Link Constraint or baking the transform into keys (the latter is the safest route and I'm surprised it's not working).